I finally made it to Lederach and I'm utterly flabbergasted.
I've never seen a golf course that so brazenly, purposefully, and perplexingly broke virtually every single convention and expectation of modern golf. Those who expect golf to be a fair and predictable affair will absolutely detest it. Many will be completely confused by it. Others, and I suspect many who participate here, will relish it. Me....I couldn't wipe the smile from my face.
I've read the Kelly Moran built Lederach after spending some time studying the courses of the British Isles. And one can clearly see the influences, but not in the expected ways where we see fescue, pot bunkers, and maybe a few requisite double-greens in an attempt to emulate the Old Sod. Instead, Lederach borrows more from the wild, wooly, adventurous style of a Prestwick or a Cruden Bay than it does a Muirfield or Lytham.
Under no circumstance would I call Lederach "minimalist". Although natural features and flow of the property are fully utilized, a good deal of earth looks to have been moved to create features, to construct artificial, jagged, irregular mounding, and to eschew expectations. How a course this "different" was built in the first place is something that flowed through my mind a number of times. Wouldn't the township officials have insisted on something more conventional?
After playing the 6th hole, I found myself glancing nervously at what hole I was on, simply because I was afraid that the round was progressing too quickly, and might end too soon. I was having much too much fun, although my playing partners, both members at Rolling Green (and no, not the usual suspects everyone here knows), were not having the same type of adventurous enjoyment, one having found "blind" bunkers on back to back holes, and another taking too aggressive a line on the third which resulted in a picked up "X". They seemed confounded and as the temperature of the day picked up, their blood pressure seemed to rise in equal measure.
Others here have discussed the course in some depth and I won't belabor those points except to say that it had some of the most random, chaotic, thought-provoking, and clearly unfair holes I've seen built in modern times. There are some holes that don't work, such as the 11th, and I have to wonder if the steeply uphill 650 yard 12th, where I hit my best drive of the day followed by a solid driver from the deck, only to be left with a completely blind, 200 yard uphill approach to a shallow shelf of a green didn't stretch the realm of plausability, but overall there is a wonderful balance of holes that are fun and different, if more than a little unusual.
There are numerous blind shots, blind bunkers, center line bunkers, and wide avenues of play around them, but what finally separates Lederach from more standard fare are the greens and green complexes. They are the boldest greens in terms of shape, size, undulation, and surrounds that I can remember playing in a long time. They truly brought to mind the approaches one faces at the Old Course, with surfaces that seem to emulate the extremes one faces there in terms of slope and undulation on holes like the 2nd, or shallow hood of a car greens like the 12th and 14th of St. Andrews. Thankfully, the slope rating is kept at a reasonable pace (probably 7 or
so they putt wonderfully.
A cautionary note is that there was a lot of water thrown on the course by the maintenance staff overnight, and I hope that isn't going to be the practice because this course was clearly meant to be played firm and fast.
So overall...some will hate it, some will find it infuriating, some will be pleasantly bemused, while others will love it.
But, no one will be bored by it.